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A Hero’s Many FacesRaoul Wallenberg in Historiography and Popular Imagination

A Hero’s Many Faces: Raoul Wallenberg in Historiography and Popular Imagination [The majority of books on Wallenberg have not been written by historians, but by journalists such as Rudolph Philipp, who wrote directly after the war, John Bierman, Harvey Rosenfeld, and Elenore Lester, who all published in the beginning of the 1980s when Wallenberg became known outside Sweden and Hungary.1 The books by Bierman, Rosenfeld and Lester were written in English and are among the best-known studies on Wallenberg, being referred to by many of the Wallenberg monument artists. In evaluating these books, as well as those written by Wallenberg’s colleagues, including Per Anger and Lars Berg,2 which will be summarized as popular accounts in the following discussion, one must keep in mind that these authors, as I see it, did not intend to create a myth around Wallenberg. Rather, they presented the facts to which they had access at the time. Nonetheless, they took advantage of telling Wallenberg’s story in the style of a mythological narrative, including exaggerations and hearsay comments, without always having historical evidence in form of documents. Their behavior could be attributed to the fact that they were not academic scholars and that, a point I believe is even more important, they remained hopeful that Wallenberg had survived. Encouraged by new witness reports in the late 1970s that Wallenberg was still alive, these authors regarded their publications about Wallenberg as instruments to raise public awareness of his fate.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

A Hero’s Many FacesRaoul Wallenberg in Historiography and Popular Imagination

Part of the The Holocaust and its Contexts Book Series
Schult, Tanja
Springer Journals — Nov 12, 2015
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9 pages

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 2009
ISBN
978-1-349-30796-8
Pages
41 –50
DOI
10.1057/9780230236998_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[The majority of books on Wallenberg have not been written by historians, but by journalists such as Rudolph Philipp, who wrote directly after the war, John Bierman, Harvey Rosenfeld, and Elenore Lester, who all published in the beginning of the 1980s when Wallenberg became known outside Sweden and Hungary.1 The books by Bierman, Rosenfeld and Lester were written in English and are among the best-known studies on Wallenberg, being referred to by many of the Wallenberg monument artists. In evaluating these books, as well as those written by Wallenberg’s colleagues, including Per Anger and Lars Berg,2 which will be summarized as popular accounts in the following discussion, one must keep in mind that these authors, as I see it, did not intend to create a myth around Wallenberg. Rather, they presented the facts to which they had access at the time. Nonetheless, they took advantage of telling Wallenberg’s story in the style of a mythological narrative, including exaggerations and hearsay comments, without always having historical evidence in form of documents. Their behavior could be attributed to the fact that they were not academic scholars and that, a point I believe is even more important, they remained hopeful that Wallenberg had survived. Encouraged by new witness reports in the late 1970s that Wallenberg was still alive, these authors regarded their publications about Wallenberg as instruments to raise public awareness of his fate.]

Published: Nov 12, 2015

Keywords: Popular Literature; Historical Situation; Book Title; Skeptical Attitude; Contemporary Historian

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